Archive for the ‘A/FX’ tag

If you can’t have the original of something, you might as well have a replica of it, and if you’re going to have a replica of something, you might as well have it built by the same guy who built the original, as is the case with this 1964 Chevrolet Nova “Chevy 2 Much” A/FX gasser for sale on Hemmings.com, which Doug Thorley initially built as a museum piece, but which has since been converted to a fully functional car capable of hitting the dragstrip once again. From the seller’s description:

Doug had decided to recreate the ‘Chevy 2 Much’, because as he puts it: “Steve Gibbs who was running the NHRA museum wanted me to put a car in the new museum”. So Doug rounded up most of the friends who labored over the original car to help him build the new ‘Chevy 2 Much II’, including: Ted Brown, Tom Rodriguez, HL Shannan, Gary Slusser, Fletch & of course Doug Kruze! When the new build was completed, the new ‘Chevy 2 Much II’ went straight into the NHRA museum and sat for 11 years before Doug decided that he wanted to see the car enjoyed. During lunch one day, Doug offered Ron Maxwell, an old friend from his hometown of Cedar City, Utah, the chance to buy it. Ron jumped at the chance, and immediately began the process of bringing the car back to life. Since the car had a ‘dummy block’ while it was in the NHRA museum, Ron decided he wanted a running & driving drag car, with just the right driveline. The updated drivetrain consists of the following: a 496ci Chevrolet big-block by Wheeler Power Products in Florida (Dyno-ed @ 742 hp w/ 621 Lbs./ Ft. Torque), 4.250” stroke crank, forged Eagle H-beam rods, Icon forged pistons, Howard’s Cam solid-roller camshaft, exact duplicate #467 of the original Hilborn Injection (chromed & polished), Brodex aluminum heads, Turbo-Hydra-Matic 400 Manual valve body, 3800 stall converter, and 9” Ford rear-end w/ nodular center section & 4.11 gears. The front suspension is a period-correct leaf-sprung solid axle w/ Bilstein racing shocks, & out back is a 4-link system w/ adjustable shocks. To make the car safe & legal for making full speed exhibition passes, additional support & bars were welded into the basic cage frame installed by Doug Thorley years earlier. The original Bright Candy Tangerine – Red Paint Scheme & Original Gold-Leaf Graphics/Lettering done by Gil’s Auto Body is just as it was when Doug & his good friends built the car.

In 1965, Holman-Moody built 10 A/FX factory lightweight Mustangs for the members of Ford’s “Drag Council.” The program was so successful that the constructor petitioned Ford for the right to produce additional customer cars, of which three were believed to have been assembled. On June 6, a 1965 Ford Mustang A/FX later-production car, said to be one of five remaining and the only survivor to retain its altered wheelbase, will cross the auction block in Seattle, Washington.

While the original 10 factory lightweight A/FX Mustangs were “sold” to Drag Council members for a token $1 charge, later cars carried a price tag commensurate with the modifications required to turn a production Mustang into a quarter-mile contender. Per Charles Morris’s Factory Lightweights, Holman-Moody estimated their build cost to be $11,170, including the cost of the car, the Ford 427-cu.in. V-8, and all necessary labor. That likely put the selling price in the $12,000 range, or nearly four times the cost of the K-Code Mustang fastback on which the car was based.

Before being shipped to H&M’s shop in Charlotte, North Carolina, each Mustang had its front fenders, hood, doors, rear seat, all glass except the rear hatch, spare tire, jack, seam sealing, front bumper and mounts, engine, radiator, transmission, driveshaft, and fuel lines deleted, in preparation for the conversion from street car to race car. To save weight, fiberglass body panels were substituted for the steel originals, and polycarbonate was used in lieu of glass. Though A/FX Mustangs came in several colors (including the Poppy Red seen here), black vinyl was the only option for the interior.

The first seven cars built received Ford’s SOHC 427 V-8, but these “Cammer” engines were in short supply, so 427 Wedge V-8s were substituted on the next three cars (and possibly on a few of the later production cars as well). Getting either engine to fit between the Mustang’s front fenders proved tricky and forced H&M to fabricate a twist-leaf front suspension to allow sufficient clearance. To maximize traction, the rear axle was moved forward three inches, requiring reshaping of the rear quarter panels.

The Long Gone Mustang A/FX was prepared and raced by Bob Hamilton for Larsen Ford in White Plains, New York, through the 1966 season. As delivered, the car lacked the Hilborn-style fuel injection seen here, relying on a pair of four-barrel carburetors instead. It’s not clear exactly when fuel injection was added, but several stories point to the car’s first year of competition. Later photos of the car, in its blue and white “Jersey Rattler” livery with John Skistimas driving, clearly show the current fuel injection setup, but by then the car was running in the C/Altered class thanks to its non-stock wheelbase. To remain compliant with changing NHRA A/FX regulations, most of the Holman-Moody Mustangs were restored to a factory wheelbase during the 1966 season, leaving the remaining “outlaw” cars to battle it out on the match race circuit, running against similarly altered Dodges and Plymouths.

Unlike many purpose-built track cars, this A/FX Mustang survived the ravages of competition, and is being offered with extensive paperwork documenting the car’s history, along with verification of the car’s authenticity by Lee Holman and Bob Hamilton. Though the Cammer 427 beneath its hood is not original to the car, it is said to be period-correct, as are the racing tires mounted on the car’s original magnesium wheels (included in the sale for display purposes only). The now-older restoration that returned the car to its original livery is said to be “racing quality,” and the car has been raced sparingly since.

The lightweight Mustang has crossed the block before, most recently at Russo and Steele’s 2009 Scottsdale auction, where it failed to meet the reserve price and was not sold. In 2011, Long Gone surfaced on eBay, with a “Buy it now” price reported to be $765,000. Mecum predicts a selling price between $500,000 and $750,000 when the car crosses the stage in Seattle.

The Seattle auction will take place on June 5-6 at the CenturyLink Field Event Center. For additional details, visit Mecum.com.

UPDATE (8.June 2015): The Mustang didn’t sell after bidding up to $375,000.

We’d call the pairing of “Dyno Don” Nicholson’s A/FX Comet Cyclone and Spence Ford’s B/FX “Cyanide Cyclone” at auction next month a mild-and-wild duo, except there’s little mild about either of the cars. Call them instead wild and wilder.

When Mercury decided to go drag racing in 1964, it essentially had to start from scratch. Its new Cyclone, the performance version of the compact Comet, would provide a good platform for lightweight modifications, and the division could borrow some high-performance engines from the Ford parts shelf, but Mercury needed drivers. Fortunately, according to Charles Morris, writing in Factory Lightweights: Detroit’s Drag Racing Specials of the ’60s, GM’s formal exit from drag racing freed up a number of top drivers for Fran Hernandez to recruit: Ronnie Sox, Ed Schartman, and Nicholson. Of the 21 A/FX Comets that Dearborn Steel tubing built for Mercury in 1964, using 427-cu.in. High-Riser engines, all but one used Cyclone two-door hardtop bodies. The last one, Nicholson’s, used a four-door station wagon body for better weight distribution over the rear axle, and though he switched to a Cyclone partway through the season, he also recorded high 10-second passes and notched up 63 straight wins to go undefeated in match races that year.

For 1965, Nicholson returned in a Cyclone, this time built by Bill Stroppe Engineering using many of the same tricks as the 1964 A/FX cars: fiberglass front bumper, fenders, hood, and doors; custom traction bars; Plexiglas windows; and lightweight bucket seats. Instead of the pushrod 427s, however, Morris wrote that Mercury’s Al Turner convinced Ford to release a handful of its hemi-head SOHC 427 engines to the Mercury team, one of which ended up in Nicholson’s A/FX Cyclone, backed by a four-speed and 9-inch rear axle. With a single four-barrel carburetor, the SOHC was generally considered good for 615 horsepower from the factory, but with some massaging and another four-barrel from Nicholson, his engine reportedly produced somewhere in the neighborhood of 700 horsepower. Nicholson remained atop the match-race heap throughout the year, consistently turning in mid-10-second timeslips, not only by constantly tuning the SOHC engine, but also by altering the Cyclone’s wheelbase, leading the way for march of the funny cars in later years. According to Mecum, which will offer Nicholson’s Cyclone at its Indianapolis event, the Cyclone comes with extensive documentation, including the original Lincoln-Mercury sales agreement, dated December 1, 1964; the original Lloyd’s of London spectator liability insurance policy issued to Nicholson; and a letter Nicholson wrote before his death in 2006 approving of the car’s restoration back to its as-delivered (pre-altered wheelbase) configuration.

Not only did Mercury bring back its A/FX effort for 1965, it also expanded into B/FX that year. Also built by Stroppe, the 15 B/FX Cyclones featured many of the same modifications as the A/FX cars – lightweight body panels, deleted options, racing bucket seats, four-speed and 9-inch – but used the 271hp four-barrel 289-cu.in. small-block V-8. While the A/FX cars were provided only to factory-chosen racers such as Nicholson, Mercury made the B/FX cars available through its dealerships – at a price of $4,776, or about $2,100 more than a base Cyclone. What’s more, buyers could select from a couple of induction options, including dual quads ($249.50) or four Webers ($595), the latter good for about 400 horsepower. Morris noted that the B/FX Cyclones were generally good for timeslips in the 11.30-second to 11.70-second range.

According to Mecum, the B/FX Cyclone at the Indianapolis auction, known as the Cyanide Cyclone, was sponsored by Spence Ford of Boyertown, Pennsylvania, when new. Both the Nicholson A/FX Cyclone and the B/FX Cyanide Cyclone are part of the Richard Ellis collection of high-performance Fords, which includes the one-of-one Shelby G.T. 500 Super Snake. According to Mecum’s Infonet, the last time an A/FX Cyclone cross the Mecum block was in 2010 at Indianapolis, when the Arnie Beswick car bid up to $310,000 but didn’t sell. The last B/FX Cyclone to cross a Mecum auction block was at last year’s Kissimmee sale; it bid up to $150,000 but didn’t sell.

Mecum’s Indianapolis auction will take place May 14-19 at the Indiana State Fairgrounds. For more information, visit Mecum.com.

UPDATE (20.May 2013): Nicholson’s Cyclone sold for $410,000, while the Cyanide Cyclone sold for $75,000.

Before November of 2008, the whereabouts of only one of the six “production” Super Duty Pontiac Tempest Le Mans coupes was known. Then in a sequence of events that caught the attention of the collector-car world, another one appeared, with its seller initially oblivious to its importance and rarity; he soon learned what made his car special as bidding on the dilapidated coupe skyrocketed. Now restored, that same Super Duty Le Mans will head to auction again in January.

During the height of the lightweight era on American drag strips, and shortly before GM’s corporate-wide ban on racing, Pontiac tried several tactics to best the competition. Some of its full-size cars destined for the dragstrip benefited from lighter aluminum parts, and a handful of those cars – the famed Swiss cheese cars – had holes drilled in their frame rails for further weight reduction. With the 326-cu.in. Pontiac V-8 finally available in the compact Tempest in 1963, Pontiac’s engineers then decided to fit the Super Duty 421-cu.in. V-8 from the full-size cars into the Tempest, taking extensive measures to adapt the dual-quad, underrated-at-405hp Super Duty engine to the Tempest’s “rope-drive” rear-transaxle chassis. What resulted was the Powershift four-speed semi-automatic transaxle unique to the six Le Mans coupes and six Tempest station wagons built to compete in the NHRA’s A/FX class, along with 12-second timeslips and class wins across the country.

This particular Le Mans, delivered to Stan Long Pontiac in Detroit, made the rounds with Stan Antlocer as hotshoe. Not long afterward, Antlocer removed the Powershift transaxle and installed a three-speed manual transmission and 4.30-geared solid rear axle from an earlier full-size Pontiac, along with clear plastic side and rear windows. He then convinced the NHRA of its legality, resulting in timeslips of 11.93 seconds at 123.95 MPH along with an A/FX record and the title of World’s Fastest Tempest. What happened to it after Antlocer finished racing it, nobody seems to know. The entire aluminum front clip appeared at a Detroit-area swap meet years later, but the rest of the car didn’t show up until 2008, when it emerged – crusty, sans drivetrain, and fitted with a steel front clip – from a garage in Harrison, Michigan. Its VIN – 263P76752 – along with the faded lettering on its sides and roof and the plastic windows still with the car verified it as the Stan Long Le Mans. It sold a week later for $226,000.

Scott Tiemann of Supercar Specialties in Portland, Michigan – no stranger to these cars after restoring the Union Park Super Duty Tempest station wagon – was immediately tasked by the car’s new owner with its restoration. Though an attempt was made to reunite the car with its original front clip, Tiemann said a price couldn’t be agreed on, so the new owner had Randy Ferguson of Ferguson Coachbuilding hammer out an all-new aluminum front clip from scratch. The only other original Super Duty parts remaining with the car were the finned aluminum front drums, side and rear glass, clear plastic windshield, headers and exhaust. Tiemann said that Antlocer had actually devised the solid-axle swap so that it mostly bolted into place, making it simple(ish) to restore the car to its factory-delivered state, but the lack of an available Powershift transaxle led to the decision to restore the car to Antlocer’s solid-axle configuration. Coincidentally, the new owner already had a Doug Hughes-built Super Duty 421 intended for a full-size Pontiac, but elected to install it in the Le Mans instead.

Tiemann wrapped up the restoration of the Le Mans in time for it to appear at the 2010 Concours d’Elegance of America at Meadow Brook and – aside from an appearance at the Pontiac Nationals later that year – said he believes it hasn’t been shown since. The last time a Super Duty Le Mans came up for auction, the Wynn Engineering Le Mans campaigned by Roger Schmidt and George DeLorean sold out of Dana Mecum’s collection for $445,000 in 2010 at Mecum’s Indianapolis event.

The Stan Long Pontiac Super Duty Le Mans will cross the block at Mecum’s Kissimmee auction, which will take place January 18-27. For more information, visit Mecum.com.

UPDATE: Heard today from the owner of the Le Mans, John Riconda. He wanted to clarify that he did indeed have a Powershift transaxle that he said could have been restored to use in the Le Mans, but he made the decision to restore it to the solid-axle version because that is the more successful and famous configuration of the car. That Powershift transaxle will not be included in the sale, but he will give the buyer of the car the option of buying the transaxle.

As for how Antlocer convinced the NHRA of the car’s legality after its conversion, Riconda said that Pontiac actually assigned part numbers for the parts that Antlocer used.

UPDATE (27.January 2013): The Le Mans failed to sell after bidding up to $325,000.

We recently completed a special bonus issue of Hemmings Muscle Machines magazine devoted entirely to modified cars, something we haven’t previously done. The purpose of the project was to provide us with an outlet to present some of the more significantly altered cars we’ve come across in our travels, the stuff that might be a bit too radical for the pages of HMM‘s normal format.

Among the features in our All-Modified special is a piece on the 1960s-style altered wheelbase creations of Steve Magnante. You may recognize Steve from his television appearances as a commentator for the Speed Network’s coverage of Barrett-Jackson’s auction events, or from his byline in various performance-car magazines, and if so, you already know that Steve’s a hardcore gearhead.

According to his own accounts, Steve’s childhood was spent assembling model car kits, focusing on the radical dragstrip warriors that evolved during the 1960s. In time, Steve began engaging in “kit bashing,” where parts are scavenged from various model kits to create highly detailed likenesses of cars that have may have been overlooked by the retail kit makers. In a natural progression, as Steve came of age, he began to mess with real cars, following the hot rodding tendencies his early influences had inspired.

Finally, about a dozen years back, Steve’s worlds collided when he set out to build a life-size 1960s A/FX racer that would be fully functional. The twist was that the resulting racer would also have to be streetable, merging all the radical attitude of a period-accurate altered-wheelbase “match-bash” crowd pleaser while wearing current license plates.

To that end, Steve built a Chevy II patterned somewhat after Bill Thomas’s mid-1960s efforts and running a big-block Chevy with stack injection, a straight front axle hung from leaf springs and a rear axle moved forward significantly. A Dodge Dart would receive similar treatment a couple of years later; then, in a move that model kit bashers could surely appreciate, Steve built yet another altered car, this time as a “What if?” exercise, using a 1980s Ford Fairmont and a late-model Ford four-cam modular V-8.

We spent some time with Steve at his Massachusetts garage and even got some seat time in the Dart and Nova, and then reported on the cars, their creator, his philosophies and everything that entails in the Muscle Machines “All-Modified” special, set to hit newsstands in just a few weeks, paired up with the January issue; subscribers will see the special issue on its own in mailboxes soon.

If, like me, you saw Steve Magnante make a couple passes at Musclepalooza XI in his Chevy II-based AFXer, you’ve probably been jonesing for such a car ever since. And if you desire some race history to go with your AFXer, then this 1965 Chevrolet Nova may just be the car for you. From the seller’s description:

Original AFX Altered wheelbase Drag Car built from a new Nova in 1965, Nova-Caine was Lost and timewarped for years, Documented with period photos, California race history, ran 9.80s at 140 MPH in 67!, Big Block with Hilborn Injection, Museum condition, Mechanically fresh, A piece of American Drag Racing History.

The 14th annual NHRA California Hot Rod Reunion, presented by the Automobile Club of Southern California, September 30-October 2, 2005, will feature top nostalgia drag racers competing in Top Fuel, Junior Fuel, Supercharged Gassers, and A/FX classes as well as a variety of exhibition entries. The weekend includes hundreds of street rods, customs and muscle cars as well as a swap meet and manufacturers’ midway.
As always, the sensational “Cacklefest” will fill the grandstands as more than 30 historic front-engine dragsters push-start and then line up side by side where they all “cackle” simultaneously, lighting up the night!

Tickets for the NHRA California Hot Rod Reunion, presented by the Automobile Club of Southern California, are available by calling 800-884-6472. For additional reunion information, call 909-622-8562 or visit museum.nhra.com.

(This post originally appeared in the September 22, 2005, issue of the Hemmings eWeekly Newsletter.)